


Champions

by Gale_Breeze



Category: Pocket Monsters | Pokemon (Main Video Game Series)
Genre: Gen, not quite a character study, rambling thoughts about pokemon protagonists
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-07-23
Updated: 2019-07-23
Packaged: 2020-07-12 04:50:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,131
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19940482
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gale_Breeze/pseuds/Gale_Breeze
Summary: Years in the life of the Champions of the world.





	Champions

Five years ago, he's handed a Bulbasaur and a Pokedex, and told to explore the entire region and defeat the strongest man in the world, the Dragon Of Kanto, Lance. Red nods solemnly, and sets to work. From Viridian Forest he catches a Pikachu, and from Silph Co he earns a Lapras. From Route 12 he befriends a Snorlax, and on the shores of Cinnabar Island he meets both a Charmeleon and a Wartortle. They are the most dangerous team in all of Kanto, and nothing can even begin to challenge them.  
  
But after a while... That becomes the _problem_. Nothing does challenge them. Sabrina is a mild challenge, Blaine is barely even an afterthought, and tearing the last remnants of Team Rocket out from Kanto is such little trouble that he forgets he even does it. It's all so easy. The weak Trainers he encounters are all so forgettable that Red loses hours of his life, forgets hours of memories, simply because nobody can interest him enough to remember the fights he's had. He arrives at the Indigo Plateau, and the path through Victory Road is a blur of caverns and Ace Trainers he can barely think about, let alone remember.   
  
Lorelei is pitiful, Bruno is a meager challenge, and Agatha barely poses a threat. But Lance... Lance is just that little bit different. Every member of Lance's team is a challenge, and they fight as hard as they physically can. For everything Red can throw, Lance can throw right back, and Red remembers what challenge feels like, what the fight was like. They're the same, Lance and Red, and to an outside observer their fight looks like the most brutal battle the League has seen in years, to them, it's just two kids enjoying something that they'd lost track of years ago.   
  
An hour later, Red fights Blue.  
  
Years down the line, he still can't remember it.   
  
Four years ago, he becomes Champion. Where he used to remember the odd fight or two, the haze of boredom threatens to consume his every waking moment. Lance tells him it's been three months. It barely feels like a week. His Mom calls him, and Red barely remembers their conversation. The challengers he faces as Champion are barely even recognizable as different people - a hundred, a thousand, a _million_ different people blending together as they bumble their way through the Elite Four with a bag full of Hyper Potions and Revives.  
  
He lives through fight after fight, and they're all... So pathetic. So peaceful. So civilized. So... Merciful. Red remembers the old days, where the fights were neither kind nor cruel, neither fair nor rigged, where the only things that mattered to a Pokemon was their own Type and how fast and hard they could hit. Where it was the skill of the Trainer, the commands and tactics that they had honed, that ultimately helped to turn the tide. Every day, Red stares out at a sea of lost Trainers, and knows that the era of battling he had grown in, had matured and practiced in, was doomed to a slow and crawling death. It was him, Blue, Professor Oak, and maybe a few dozen fellow Trainers around the world left. Nobody really tries to fight anymore. It was all just games to them, picking out what Pokemon had STAB bonuses and the right Natures and IVs or some such. It is a sickening art, and Red crushes as many of them as he can.   
  
These are the fights he relishes, that he adores. Red gathers a reputation, a legend, as he slams each and every feeble and useless one of these Trainers into the dust. The things they care about - the dominant meta, Held Items, Natures, IVs and EVs - don't matter. They never mattered, not in Red's arena, not in Red's sanctuary, because he has discarded those things, seen their uselessness, and kept to the purity of his craft, of his art, and if he has to crush every single Trainer on the face of the Earth to make sure everybody understands that, then that's how it has to be. No matter what sort of tricks they pull against the Elite Four, they stop with him. He refuses to let any of these pathetic nothings become Champion when they've never done a single thing to earn it.  
  
Red remembers the old days, back when he was crawling through Viridian Forest, and asks himself how a fight against a Level 7 Weedle had been infinitely more interesting and fun than any of the fights he has nowadays. He supposes it was the innocence - just two kids having a fun Fight, and not the harsh science of Battling that existed today.  
  
Three years ago, he and the Elite Four go to the World Pokemon Tournament. A battle to decide who was the World Champion, The Very Best. For a while, he thinks it will be easy - that his victory here will be as drab and unmemorable as fighting the Elite Four was. But then he sees the other Champions. From Hoenn, and Sinnoh, and Unova, and Kalos, and Alola, they're all Champions, but Red sees in them a kind of kinship he has never felt for anyone else but Blue. He dives in to the tournament with the aura of a man who has rediscovered how to live.  
  
He sends out Venusaur, his oldest and most faithful companion. And after a grueling battle... The opponent's Aggron _wins_. It falls to Pikachu moments later, but for the briefest of moments, for a single and solitary instant... Red is forced to recalculate. For the first time in years, Red feels the pressure of a true fight push up against him. It's beautiful. But, of course, like all other fights that he can remember, it slowly turns sour - none of the Champions can truly match him, they have to rely on Legendaries. Have to rely on overwhelming power, rely on overwhelming his team before they can even react or fight back...  
  
They can't do it. Red wins. He _always_ wins. It wasn't the initial curbstomp and victory that he had imagined at the start, but he still won. But as he sees the raw joy on the faces of every other Champion that he'd crushed, the pure hope that they'd gotten for finally having experienced a loss in combat, to be told that they weren't the invincible gods everyone in their home region thought they were, Red feels... Jealous. He feels empty, because he knows deep in the back of his mind that nobody focuses as closely or single-mindedly on Pokemon Fighting as hard as he does, and that for all the effort the other Champions put in, they're still only Battling - not Fighting. The difference is bittersweet, and Red hates that they don't understand and loves that nobody else has to feel like he does. The organizers of the WPT crown him as the World Champion.  
  
The moment he's back in Kanto, he resigns as the Champion. A month later, he hears that a girl by the name of Leaf has been instated as the new Kanto Champion. There are cheers about how the World Champion has never been defeated in his home region, and never will be. It's said as a compliment, but all Red can feel is hollow.  
  
Two years ago, he stands atop Mount Silver, and waits. It's cold, but the seven of them can handle it. This is it, he had reasoned to himself last year, if this doesn't get him the real challenge he had been craving all these years, the true and beautiful FIGHT that he'd always wanted, then nothing would. Red lets himself be seen at the bottom of the mountain, just long enough for word of the World Champion's location to spread, and then starts the climb upwards. Fight through Mount Silver, Red silently demands of the world, fight through Mount Silver, and fight the only Trainer who has never lost a single Fight. It works, and Red starts to fight only the best of the very best.  
  
He remembers _everything_. Time starts to flow properly for him now, no hazy gaps in his memory. Soon enough, he meets three people. A boy named Ethan, who can't process mundane life without the frenzied rush of a fight. A girl named Dawn, who wants a fight beyond what the meager boundries of the League can grant her. And a girl named Hilda, who fully admits to being a little bloodthirsty in her challenges. The three of them, seperately at first, scale Mount Silver and fight against Red, against the Champion Of Champions. And for the first time in so, so, so long...  
  
Red feels... Worried.  
  
Red _loses_.  
  
Red laughs and cries tears of joy.  
  
The three of them, for whatever reason, stay with him. Ethan admits that he looks up to Red. Dawn says that she doesn't want to go back to normal fights. Hilda admits that she isn't leaving until she can beat his team without a single faint. The four of them and their Pokemon are... Friends. It's been a while since Red has had friends.  
  
One year ago, Blue scales the mountain and finally beats Red. "It took me years, but I finally did it! I beat you, Red!"  
  
"Took you long enough," Red laughs.  
  
He has an offer - the Battle Tree. It's in Alola, far from Kanto. But it's going to be a _proper_ facility just for battling. But he can't run it alone - it needs staff, people who will draw in a crowd, who know the difference between Battling and Fighting. And Red looks at his three friends, at his team, at Blue, and... Some semblance of a plan, of an idea he hasn't had for years, drifts into view. It's the dumbest idea he's ever had.  
  
The man heading up the Battle Tree has ideas about the Meta, and restrictions and party sizes, and Red ignores all of that to create something he believes needs to be made. It takes the four of them about a month to scour Alola for the absolute best Trainers, the peak of skill, and invite them to the Battle Tree. The weaker ones wait on the lower tree platforms, a constant warzone of Battling against each other to grind away at each other's weaknesses. The stronger ones, the ones that understand the difference between Battling and Fighting, wait in the middle platforms and branches, the Veterans and Aces of the Training World.  
  
And on the top five branches of the tree, the Champion's Four await. Hilda lets her Excadrill tear the first wave to shreds, and sates her bloodlust there. Whoever gets past her deals with Dawn, who has her Roserade slowly wittle away at the energy and endurance of their opponents with an icy calm. Surviving that allows one to fight Ethan, who commanded Houndoom with a relentless fury that most simply can't deal with. Besting him opened the door to Blue, who just smiled and let Arcanine go to work. There was a reason his platform of the Tree was fireproofed. And atop the Tree, open to the sky, with a direct view of the Pokemon League stood Red, Champion of Champions, _King_ of Champions.  
  
Red feels happier, these days.  
  
He isn't all there, most days. Some days, he still feels like he's in a haze. Those are the days he takes off, and calls his Mom. There are days when he fights Blue, because he sometimes forgets that it's been five years. There are days when Hilda scares him, because the bloodlust reminds him too much of Team Rocket. There are days when Dawn makes him laugh uncontrollably, reminded of all the arrogant Trainers who think intellect is everything. There are days when Ethan fights and Red can only see a younger version of himself and Pikachu on the field.  
  
But... Despite everything, it's... _Better_. Not great. But better.  
  
One week ago, Red meets Luna, the Alolan Champion. She's quiet. So is he, to be fair. They get along fairly well.  
  
"The world used to be different," she tells him one night. "But I think we fell, somewhere along the line. Alola is almost like a beautiful dream..." A dream, huh?  
  
 _(he remembers living on a mountain alone. nobody joined him on the peak. one day, he died alone.)_  
  
 _(he remembers living on a mountain alone. a boy in a hat arrived one day. they fought.)_  
  
 _(he remembers living on a mountain alone. there is no lapras, but an espeon.)_  
  
 _(he remembers a crack in the sky, and nothing more.)_  
  
"I think I'm happy with that," Red says.  
  
If Luna notices that it's said more to himself than her, she doesn't say anything.


End file.
